It won't make the iPad look like the Zune. The iPod didn't beat the Zune because it was cheaper, it beat it because it was a superior product. (I'm no apple fanboy, though I did briefly own an ipod before I got my smartphone). Dropping the price really low will make it look like a knock-off product, like "COBY" headphones or a fake Louis Vitton bag. Everyone will have one, but everyone will know that you paid a pittance for it.

They're probably just trying to take advantage of that cheap American labor...

Wait, how is "tracking me" taking money out of my pocket?

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm

Last year, we consumed 6.8 billion barrels of oil. This has been a pretty consistent average over the past 5 years, all things considered (5 years prior it was 7.5B, but seems to mostly fluctuate around 7B). And this is US consumption *alone* -- not even factoring in the increased rate of Chinese consumption, or any of the European, African, Asian, Australian, South American nations (Antarctica gets a pass, because it's effing cold down there and they can use a little oil to not die while watching penguins)

7.4B to 11B barrels is 2 years AT BEST if we pare down our oil consumption. Then those resources are GONE.

Considering "oh, but there might be more than we think left over!" is pretty pointless when we alone are consuming oil at this rate. Absorbing the mild inconvenience of reducing our oil consumption should be priority #1 for all of us. It doesn't solve the problem but it will (a) give us a *little* more time to get off the sauce and (b) start altering our habits and consumption practices in a direction that will prepare us for the inevitable end of oil reserves, which are guaranteed to happen someday.

One movie per year....for the trilogy? Or until Harrison Ford finally dies?

Next thing you know, you'll start see blue-tinted crystal meth popping up everywhere....

I agree. Just because someone is not paying the taxes on their lunch does not mean the taxes are not being paid. Pretty sure the IRS would probably take a rather big issue if an employee as large as Google was dodging taxes on their revenues.

I don't understand why people get all bent out of shape that Ubuntu is successful -- makes me think of hipster bitching. There are many, many distros out there. Quite a few of them are actively supported and most of those use one of the common distribution architectures (deb/rpm). You can quite literally take your pick and not be that far behind the curve w/r/t support. If you are a linux user, there is seriously no reason to complain about "Ubuntu" as an OS. If it makes you butthurt to call it a Linux distro, then just leave off the "Linux" surname, just like Android does. Or MacOS.

Don't buy from this bozo, I'll sell you the Bridge for a mere pittance -- only $500!

Why would a Mac user leave the Linux-based-MacOS? I mean, I guess the MacOS window manager is pricey, but... I fled Windows 3 years ago and it's like being able to finally breathe. Everytime I have to use Windows (for testing, typically), which is thankfully a rare occurrence, it feels so stifling and awkward. Even Win7. Usability in Windows is terrible.

While I agree with your sentiment, this is not really true in the Real World (tm).

My philosophy, as a webdev of...8 or 9 years now... is that you should test in IE so that the IE user experience is passable / acceptable. IE users should be able to access your site and not see a broken site. It can be degraded; it can even automatically redirect them to a page that says "your browser is so old and busted we can't show you our new hotness -- go upgrade, biatch."

There are 2 main reasons for this:

1. 1. If a user views your site in a shitty browser, and it looks broken, they aren't going to think "oh, maybe my browser sucks" they are going to think "why does this website suck?"
2. 2. Look at your analytics data. It's entirely possible that your Techno-Progressive-Hipster site is purely Webkit/Gecko based browsers, but it more than likely isn't -- chances are you've got somewhere between 20% to 70% of your users using IE. Would you really not test your site for that many of your userbase? Are you really going to reject that much of your traffic?

The sites I work with are pretty progressive about their IE support and are willing to only support back to IE8 (or in one case, IE7), so IE6 is no longer a concern. It's fine to advocate using better browsers, and it's even fine to design your site to the W3C specs explicitly (eg. go for the gold with your CSS and HTML5), but you should always test and at least provide your IE users (however many they are) with a degraded, yet stable, experience, at least. Base it on your analytics data.